Napa wineries suffer losses from today's 6.1 and tweet about it

The largest earthquake to hit the San Francisco Bay Area in 25 years sent scores of people to hospitals, ignited fires, damaged buildings and cut power to thousands in California's wine country on Sunday. (Aug. 24)

on.aol.com

Napa Valley Earthquake update by Patti Pietschmann--this morning (Sunday, August. 24) at 3:20 a.m. the entire Napa Valley region was rattled by a major 6.1 earthquake which caused at least 100 injuries to people, destruction to buildings and the spillage of a whole lot of mighty fine wines.

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Reports from various vintners are coming in via Twitter and Facebook. David Duncan of Silver Oak Winery tweeted that he lost hundreds of bottles in his office and three casks fell and leaked but were salvageable. Viticulturist, Steve Matthiasson, tweeted that all the winery’s 2013 red barrels are on the ground and the loss has not yet been assessed.

According to a late report by the Los Angeles Times wine columnist S.Irene Virbila, “Wine publicist and journalist Alan Goldfarb reports that Bouchaine Vineyards, also in Carneros, lost a good deal of Cabernet (they’re still trying to figure out how much).”

Today’s quake not only affected wineries, but wine businesses in the valley also took a hit. Carole Meredith of Lagier Meredith tweeted that she heard from a friend that wine is flowing out to NBC into the parking lot.

Since it’s Sunday it’s hard to locate public relations people who handle the area, many of whom are probably pretty stressed out themselves. But we hope to get more news about the wineries. Let’s face it wine makes the Napa Valley go round.

Share this article

Patti Pietschmann's been plugged into the LA scene for years as author of Harper Collins' best selling ACCESS travel, former contributing editor to LA Magazine and various radio gigs. She has traveled the world with her husband Richard, on assignments and for personal pleasure, has enjoyed hundreds of cruises (she and Richard started young), eaten in restaurants around the globe, spa hopped, trekked, hiked and hit the ground running. The former Teen Editor of Newsday in New York, Patti was also a co-west coast editor of Departures Magazine, and a frequent contributor to such diverse media as Cruisecritic.com, LA Times, Miami Herald, St. Petersburg Times, Virtuoso's Voyage, Luxurydomain.com, Bel-air Magazine, Priority Magazine, dozens of in-flight magazines, and more. She also writes 4 additional columns for Examiner.com (Spas, beauty, cruises and last minute deals) and several blogs: www.thedivaonthego.com, www.savvyseafarer.wordpress.com, www.pattisprattles.wordpress.com. She can be reached at ppietschma@aol.com.